Tanzania media outlets reported the President John Magufuli advises clerics to shun mixing politics and religion, insisting that by so doing they were likely to make the nation lose its direction. The President said it was high time for religious leaders to avoid using spokespersons who were purely not clerics, to avoid confusing their followers.

As US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un fly into Singapore for their 12 June summit meeting, an opinion piece at aljazeera.com, headlined ‘How 11 US presidents failed to make peace with North Korea’, highlights what should be obvious – the fact that the US has consistently worked against peace and security on the Korean peninsula:

In a recent report, (UNICEF) said that nearly half of children aged between 7 and 17 years old – 3.7 million – in Afghanistan are missing out on school due to ongoing conflict. According to a latest UNICEF report, the ongoing conflict and worsening security situation across the country, combined with deeply engrained poverty and discrimination against girls, have pushed the rate of out-of-school children up for the first time…

The recent appointment of a minister for culture comes hot on the heels of MBS’s determination to modernize the Saudi state. This raises the awkward question